ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Proteomics and Protein Structural Biology
Integrative Comparative Proteomics Identifies Core Differentially Expressed Proteins and Pathways for Drought Tolerance by Exploiting Contrasting Rice Varieties
Qiong Kuang 1
Shiyan Huang 2
Shiquan Bian 3
Jinggui Jiang 1
Mingyuan Chen 2
Junhua Liu 2
Shufan Lei 2
Zhiwen Lv 2
Liping Gan 4
Chengzhi Huang 2
1. Chongqing Three Gorges University, Chongqing, China
2. Chongqing Three Gorges Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Chongqing, China
3. Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Anhui, China
4. Chongqing Three Gorges University, Wanzhou, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Abstract
Drought stress has been a severe challenge towards world rice production. To elucidate the underlying mechanisms for rice drought adaptation, physiological characteristics, transcript expression patterns of related genes and protein profiles from rice leaves were established for four rice cultivars with drastically different drought tolerance, during which under drought stress, tolerant cultivars presented significantly reduced damage in growth and biomass retention. The loss in their main physiological characteristics was less than half of that in the sensitive varieties. Physiologically, the two tolerant varieties (303B and HY796) exhibited 30-50% higher antioxidant enzyme activities, such as catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), and superoxide dismutase (SOD), and a lower MDA level, indicating effective cell membrane protection. Besides, there were also more strongly upregulated drought responsive genes as OsDSM1, OsCPK9 and OsSNAC1 between the two varieties. More tightly coordinated response was revealed at the protein level in the tolerant varieties by proteomic analysis. Carbohydrate metabolism, redox homeostasis and protein transport were found activated in the tolerant varieties in functional enrichment analysis; while photosynthesis was suppressed. However, the networks of protein-protein interaction between more drought tolerant lines were richer and well connected. In the interaction networks of proteins, these two drought tolerant lines had key hub proteins which play pivotal roles in effective signal transduction. The results systematically presented the complex regulatory network basis of drought resistance in rice, and offered novel molecular targets for screening drought tolerance in rice.
Summary
Keywords
Antioxidant Enzymes, Drought stress, Metabolic pathways, PPI Network, Proteomics, rice
Received
09 November 2025
Accepted
28 January 2026
Copyright
© 2026 Kuang, Huang, Bian, Jiang, Chen, Liu, Lei, Lv, Gan and Huang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Liping Gan; Chengzhi Huang
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.